ABSTRACT
Drama, as a means of teaching and learning and as an object of study in text and performance, has always been part of English teaching in schools. Whether as pedagogic method or as text and performance, drama is a unique means with which to animate texts, issues, themes and ideas, bringing abstract ideas and imagined worlds to life in physical form. In its first version, the National Curriculum (NC) document for English by Professor Brian Cox and colleagues and drawn up after a consultation with English teachers around England and Wales, included a whole chapter devoted to drama. From the 1970's onwards, drama as a 'process' and 'medium' of learning, gained in popularity across secondary and primary schools, particularly associated with the work of charismatic drama teacher, Dorothy Heathcote and her close colleague, Gavin Bolton. John Yandell develops an argument on the social nature of reading and its particular relevance in contemporary multimodal culture.
